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Another Stroller Battle
Something about strollers really gets to people and I’m not sure when or how this happened since I have always thought of them as the baby equivalent of a knapsack: practical, kind of inconvenient, lumpish, necessary.
Of course stroller marketing has changed and now they're more like cars than knapsacks, and so many are status symbols and many have achieved mammoth proportions. Also like cars, many of them have really appalling drivers.
So recently in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope, where there really are lots and lots of kids, a Barnes and Noble has instituted some stroller restrictions. They aren't banned from the store, but they have to be ditched somewhere, presumably to limit aisle clogging and assorted traffic jams. This has provoked enormous ire on all sides, of course, and it is a little shocking to see how rapidly the argument turned into a battle about having children in the first place.
This seems to be the place where all fights land these days. One can't just, say, be annoyed with people who are probably just as hateful with kids as without, everything has to turn into some sort of referendum on privilege and entitlement with the whole question of kids as the worst example of hideous consumerism and selfishness slapped at the center of it all. It just seems pointless. (I'm really more equal opportunity about my hatred, my thoughts recently wandering into a kind of homicidal rage for about 77 percent of the Upper West Side while trying to buy a bottle of water.)
Also pointless is to declare oneself oppressed for having to separate from a stroller briefly. Of course it's a pain, but I really hate becoming a walking obstacle course. Maybe being a dog owner prepared me for this. I'm just used to compromising on the way I shop or do things, depending on which critter I have with me at any moment. Those are the breaks and I don't really see what's wrong with this bookstore's policy, especially since it doesn't ban strollers outright. But maybe there's something I don't understand. I'm not intimate with the neighborhood (though I'm aware of the large and vibrant parent community there, and mentioned it here in the context of the "boy's hat debate"), but this all seems like just much too much. If you don't like a store's policies, or if the place is too much of a pain to deal with, why not skip the trip? On the other hand, if you're an anti-kid type who finds the stroller-set disruptive to your novel writing, which has to happen in a bookstore, perhaps it would be wise to set up camp in some area that is unattractive to the fancy, the fashionable and the under 15 set. Toddlers rarely frequent the comparative religions and reference sections, unless there's really something about Park Slope I don't know.
posted by Elise at 8:40 AM
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said...
Eh they'll change their tune when they find out how loud a fit a toddler NOT in a stroller throws on his/her 37th "please leave the books on the shelf" reminder.
2/12/2007 5:23 PM
said...
Greetings,
As what i read on this posted article, i found out the informativeness of this
kind of topic. For that reason i opened up an idea and some knowledge in this
field. well, you made just did a great job..more power!
sincerely,
Lea Go
Stylish Pet Stroller
4/09/2007 11:18 AM
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